The Oscar-nominated documentary "The Betrayal" puts a human face and name on the term collateral damage and expands its definition in the process.

The victims of war are not just those who die but also those who live. And the Vietnam War that seared the American consciousness also scarred the land and people of Southeast Asia.

As the war spread into Laos, the United States dropped 3 million tons of bombs - or one every eight minutes for nine years - on the country.

"I thought killing and dying was a normal thing," says the narrator, Thavisouk Phrasavath, who co-directed with Ellen Kuras. The film is showing in free screenings Wednesday through Friday at the UWM Union Theatre.

After the U.S. left, the Laotian people were at the mercy of the Communist Pathet Lao, which began a campaign of ethnic cleansing and re-education.

A year after a then-12-year-old Phrasavath swam across the Mekong River, his siblings and mother came across in a leaky boat. Left behind were his two sisters and his father, who was sentenced to hard labor for collaborating with the U.S.

But the Phrasavath family's escape from Laos is only half the story.

After spending time in a refugee camp in Thailand, the family finally relocated to the U.S., which they still regarded as a land of limitless opportunity.

Instead, they found "hell on earth."

The family, none of whom spoke English, was housed in an apartment in a Brooklyn crack house, which they shared with two other families. Over time, the profound dislocation and disillusionment that followed robbed them of their cultural identity and traditions, and eroded their family ties. And young Phrasavath was helpless to prevent his fatherless siblings' corruption by unsavory elements.

Filmed over a 23-year period, "The Betrayal," or "Nehrakhoon" in Lao, chronicles the family's slow-motion freefall.

But instead of creating a detailed or linear chronology - or explaining her methodology - Kuras, a cinematographer who has worked with Spike Lee, Martin Scorsese and Julian Schnabel, has crafted a poetic exercise in memory that might frustrate those in search of a more literal interpretation.

A rush of images - peaceful saffron-robed monks and brutal battlefield footage, lush scenes and stark, green tones, then gray - are clues about how they feel, but not what they did. While successful as a universal metaphor for people's powerlessness in the face of political regimes and military conflicts, the specifics are lost in the style.